Staff Member

Vientiane - Laos has borrowed 50 million dollars from the Chinese government to build a bridge across the Mekong River, state media reported Tuesday.
An agreement to finance the bridge, to be built in Pakbaeng district in the western province of Oudomxay which is divided by the Mekong River, was signed last week, the Vientiane Times reported.
"Construction of the bridge will begin shortly and is expected to be finished before 2015," said Math Sounmala, director of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport's planning and cooperation department.
The bridge will provide an important link to the international border crossing with Thailand's Nan province. A road linking the bridge to the border was built with a 16-million-dollar-loan from Thailand.
The Pakbaeng bridge will be the fifth to span the Mekong, South-East Asia's longest waterway, which flows from southern China through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

A 480-metre-long bridge is now under construction to link Huayxai district in Laos' Bokeo province to Chiang Khong in northern Thailand's Chiang Rai province. The bridge is part of the Greater Mekong subregion north-south economic corridor project, linking Chiang Rai province to Kunming, the capital of south-west China's Yunnan province.